ABSTRACT
“I am a refugee, an asylum seeker. These are not simple words” (Gurnah 2001: 4). Saleh Omar, the primary narrator of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel By the Sea, identifies some of the predicaments that face the illegal immigrant in twenty-first-century Britain. While the situation of illegality presents a particular challenge in relation to speech, as the national language works simultaneously to reflect and enforce the political boundaries of the nation, for the refugee additional complex movements with discourse are required. The terms of reference by which we might know the refugee, and in which the refugee might present him or herself, are not simple but weighted with complicated political and social baggage. Another meaning also haunts Saleh’s phrase: the labels are not simply words but vital tools through which the distinctions between national citizens, illegal immigrants, and the precarious liminal status of refugees come into being.
